In this episode, we welcome Nick Bruel. Nick is the New York Times best selling author and illustrator of Boing, Who Is Melvin Bubble, and the Bad Kitty books. We start the discussion with Jim and Nick's history together from first grade, where they met their common nemesis and how it continued in college, where Nick drew a comic strip called Kawala Bob for the bi-college newspaper. We talk about books store categorization and the evolution of the chapter book and the graphic novel. We talk about his school visits and how he has moved from a hybrid model of graphic chapter books, toward making full color graphic novels. We talk about how the graphic novel format has its own challenges and bonuses. We find out the origins of Uncle Murray from the Bad Kitty books. We mention his influence of Mad Magazine artists Sergio Argonés and Don Martin. Lionel mentions Don Marquis & George Herriman, the creators of Archy and Mehitabel. We touch briefly on Windsor McKay and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Jim’s uncle Carmine Infantino comes up a lot as a big influence. We talk about Dav Pilkey and Kazu Kibuishi and the different type of community of illustrator/authors now vs the past. We talk about Kibuishi's graphic novels Amulet and his process in creating them.

Finally we have a discussion about book banning and how it has impacted Nick’s life and career, branching off into the power and danger of books from the time they were invented. Nick talks about a larger threat of public and school libraries getting completely defunded, a process that is on the way in many states. Jim says the first book that should be banned for inappropriate subjects would be the Bible and Nick mentions that this was brought up in Utah. This was a fantastic conversation - thank you very much to Nick Bruel for joining us on the pod.